A Study On Tactics Of Traumatic Representation In The Kitchen God’s Wife And Beloved

The 20^th century is inundated with both physical and mental trauma that human beings continuously undergo in war, slaughter, racial discrimination and disease caused by colonialism and terrorism. Trauma theory, springing up in 1990 s, reveals the nature of violence in modern civilization. Since then, the contemporary western critics set off a boom for trauma research. As the testimony of victims‘ traumatic experience, the research on trauma literature has been highly praised. Implicit and unspeakable traumatic experience, as characteristics, becomes the key to express trauma. Marginalized ethnic minority in America is at the edge of mainstream discourse, bearing different kinds of psychological trauma from race, colonization, and gender etc. Therefore, African American writers describe the trauma caused by colonialism and racialism with gr eat pain. Compared with African American writers, Chinese American writers not only face with trauma of colonialism and racism, the heavier trauma they have suffered is derived from war, disaster, displacement and the culture of homeland. Hence, trauma has become an increasingly prominent theme in American minorities‘ literature works.Based on trauma theory, The Kitchen God’s Wife written by a Chinese American writer and Beloved written by an African American writer are selected as the objects for textual analysis respectively in which the mother-daughter relationship and representation of unspeakable traumatic experience from two distinctive cultural backgrounds of homeland and slavery are explored. The Kitchen God’s Wife is a story about communication barriers between a mother who immigrated to the United States from the old China because of the unbearable oppression of the patriarchal system and her daughter who was born in America suffering from multiple sclerosis. Beloved tells a story of a black mother during the time of slavery that killed her daughter with her hands out of fear of her daughter becoming a slave again. Both of the two novels are fundamental key with mother-daughter relationship from the female perspective to portrait the inner world haunted by psychological trauma of two mothers and the complicated relationship between mother and daughter. It is conductive to interpret the female trauma across racial lines as seeking similarities from differences.This thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, which examines the two writers‘ biographies, a literature review from abroad and at home, and the purpose of the present thesis. The second chapter illustrates the theoretical basis including the formation and development of trauma theory, an overview of American trauma fiction, characteristic s of American trauma fiction, and the relationship between trauma tic representation and narrative tactics. The third chapter analyzes the symptoms and causes of trauma in mothers, which intends to clarify the similar symptoms of trauma that mothers had suffered under different circumstances. The fourth chapter starts from the fragmentation narrative to analyze the representation of trauma in the following three aspects: structural fragment, character fragment and spiritual fragment. Fragmentation narrative imitates the internal representation and existence of trauma as well as externalization of trauma, showing that the indescribable traumatic experience could be underst ood. The fifth chapter considers space narrative as the breakthrough point that relies on the image of spatial prototypes and ―site analysis‖ to insinuate the American minorities‘ symptoms and causes of trauma, and the alienated and psychological harm caused by traumatic transference in the process of immigration and slavery. Moreover, latent trauma can be cured in spatial extensity. The sixth chapter sets forth violence narrative to explore unique techniques of the female writers through the description of violent scenes and representation of physical trauma on body. The seventh chapter as a conclusion is a summary of the whole thesis, pointing out that trauma tic representation of mother-daughter relationships is of universal across race. People should encourage and give support the marginalized and vulnerable groups to get out of predicaments, striving for their legal rights. It should have a strong appeal on society to care about the issue of female survival, and focus on spiritual, human and moral concern for vulnerable groups. From the perspective of traumatic representation on the mother-daughter relationship in The Kitchen God’s Wife and Beloved, this thesis wants to provide delicate and profound approach es to present unspeakable pain of trauma for the masses. In this way, this thesis shows that trauma can be accepted and understood by the public, and enriches research perspectives and achievements of trauma literature simultaneously.